China has landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon.

Just when things couldn't get any more strange:

A Chinese warship armed with an electromagnetic railgun appears to have set sail on the open ocean

We have talked about that thing many times, its fake news.

That isn't a railgun.

This is a railgun.

Taiwan president calls for international support to defend democracy

and

Chinese President Xi Jinping gives army its first order of 2019: be ready for battle

Happy new year?

There are still a shitload of people claiming that there is nothing to worry about. Nothing serious will come from it. A war just is not going to happen. It's all exaggerated or fake news. While I do think outright invasion is still not an immediate concern because Xi is a big coward and he isn't going to invade Taiwan unless he is absolutely sure that he can win it or no foreign power will intervene, China don't need to invade Taiwan to make Taiwanese suffer.

Xi Jinping's too chickenshit to do anything but make Taiwan miserable by throwing money at Taiwan's dwindling allies.

Once Taiwan is alone, then and only then will he "reclaim" it.

Edited by M84 on Jan 6th 2019 at 1:14:34 AM

Even alone, Taiwan's going to be a hard nut to crack. So it's unlikely the PRC will ever try to reclaim it, either by force or politics.

Unless the Taiwanese themselves put forward some sort of declaration of intent. At which point we'll see pigs with wings and rocket boosters fly around the world twice.

Mind you, that the PLA is completely obsessed with a Taiwan operation, regardless of the difficulties. The general idea is to have the capability to invade by 2020 IIRC, but preferably "reclaim" the place by all means short of war.

It's highly unlikely they will try until they've convinced themselves they could. As the PLA is a political army, the operation might not necessarily be a militarily sound idea in any way, but they must do it as a matter of course and political urgency. It makes sense to them, not necessarily us.

Amusingly, Ian Easton's China Invasion Threat notes that internal PLA documents for various levels of planning don't consider failure at all. It's considered a too sensitive a matter politically and is therefore restricted to the higher levels.

Edited by TerminusEst on Jan 5th 2019 at 1:44:18 AM

Not considering failure is a pretty good sign that the plans are unworkable. You don't consider a serious Operational Plan without factoring in the chances of failure.

And if it's restricted to the upper echelons, it's a pretty good bet that those chances of failure are so high that they're not going to try using them unless they're absolutely desperate or stark-raving mad.

Then again, given China's labyrinthine and opaque decision making process, your statement about it making sense only to them and no one else is quite correct.

Edited by TechPriest90 on Jan 5th 2019 at 7:30:11 AM

Earl Derr Biggers

`We'll see how frightened America is' - Chinese admiral says sinking US carriers key to dominating South China Sea

Tough talk from a carrerist officer in a military that hasn't fired a shot in anger for decades...

x-posted from the military thread

Between Beijing puffing its chest at Taiwan and this; China seems to be getting more interested in sabre rattling these days.

Wonder which domestic failing(s) they are trying to distract from?

All of them.

As I have posted before, China in the 2000's is a lot like Argentina in The '70s - only they have the rest of the world cowed and can repress their people in ways the junta could only dream about.

Like the Falklands, China may try to start shit in the South China sea to cover up the failings at home.

Maybe you can enlighten me on what precisely they're failing at? I'm not too well versed with what's wrong inside China right about now.

Failing at human rights, for one.

China Uncensored Youtube channel. That guy who looks like Agent Smith's younger brother gives the dirt that the Chinese authorities try to sweep under the rug.

I've just seen that channel.

By every God living, dead and yet to be born....I'd heard it was bad there, but I never imagined it was anything as terrible as that.

I don't even know what to say. Just....damn.

There is a reason that even as much bad blood as there is in Asia we can all unite in our hatred of China.

And thats because as bad as every one else is, they are worse.

Have to be careful with Uncensored. Working with Epoch Times made them once work with what was essentially a female Alex Jones.

@Tech Priest: The logic of hiding failure is a feature (not a bug) of their inherited Communist political-military structure. It's just not a common soldier's place to question or understand the decisions of the higher-ups. You should just focus on doing as you're told and winning.

Not exactly conducive to a "world-class military", but there you go.

Edited by TerminusEst on Jan 6th 2019 at 12:50:56 PM

iunno, Myanmar, Pakistan, Cambodia, Nepal and Sri Lanka might be outliers there.

Honestly, the communist totalitarianism Mao bred, with all its viciousness and cruelty, never left the PRC.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Jan 6th 2019 at 12:50:02 PM

It's true of East Asia...with the caveat that it's also not too difficult to get them to team up against any other East Asian country.

East Asia: where everyone hates everyone.

Authoritarian bullshit has been part of China's cultural DNA for ages. Chiang Kai-shek was certainly no angel.

Edited by M84 on Jan 6th 2019 at 7:35:37 PM

Also known as "How to win over your new subjects - dissolving their councils and opening fire on them to say hi".

And then keeping on doing so, after the civil war, despite having nowhere else to go.

I was being specific about the totalitarianism because Mao introduced a truly new, unique and terrible brand that pervades throughout the mainland's security systems.

Chiang's was the usual iron-fisted military dictator torture and repression. Puyi continued brutally beating his servants and demanding that everyone venerate him throughout his puppet years in Manchukuo.

Mao began with mass thought reform, then driving people to suicide in witch hunts, then it grew from there and ended with the Cultural Revolution.

Edited by TheWildWestPyro on Jan 6th 2019 at 3:47:39 AM

Also, keep in mind that the move that won Mao the Civil War and basically laid the foundation for the People's Republic was the land reform program, which involved organising peasants for the ritual murder of some five million "landlords" (in many cases just regular farmers scooped up to meet the quota).